The woman’s smile vanished. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”
“I love it,” said Marge. “I think it’s an amazing story, and it so vividly describes what happened it’s almost as if…”
“Yes,” said the woman, glancing down at the book with a strange look in her eyes.
“Almost as if it’s autobiographical,” Marge finished, and the moment she spoke the words, she regretted them, for a hard look appeared on the woman’s face.
“Look, I’m not here to discuss my book,” she said, her voice clipped and her demeanor businesslike. “I saw on the news that the Pink Diamond was found on the beach yesterday, and I was hoping to talk to the person who found it.”
“Oh, but that wasn’t me,” said Marge, wondering why an author would resent discussing her work. Then again, writers are a strange breed, of course. Maybe she’d once wrote it and now regretted it. Or it reminded her of a time in her life she’d rather forget.
“No, I know it wasn’t you,” said Miss Gray. “But I called the TV station and they said they couldn’t divulge the identity of the finder—even though they interviewed her live on the air—and so I asked if I could speak to someone with knowledge of the situation, and they referred me to the Mayor. But when I called Town Hall, a secretary said the Mayor couldn’t take my call, since she was busy, and referred me to the police station. And when I called there…”
“They foisted you off, too.”
“So I asked the woman who answered my call if she could put me in touch with Olivia Wynn, the little girl who found the diamond, or if there was anyone in this town who would talk to me about what happened, and she gave me your name. She literally said, ‘If there’s anything you want to know about what goes on in Hampton Cove, you gotta talk to Marge Poole. She’s the town librarian, and we all know what librarians are like: a bunch of nosy busybodies!’” She smiled. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but in a sense she does have a point, however crudely expressed. When I was little and I had a difficult school assignment or an essay to write, the librarian was always the first person my mom told me to go and see.”
“And did it work?” asked Marge, happy that the initial awkwardness between them had dissipated.
“Sure. We had a very nice librarian in the town I grew up in. Her name was Hildegarde Procak, and she always had all the answers. Of course my questions were probably not that difficult, since I was only nine.”
“Oh, but you would be surprised by how difficult kids’ questions can be,” Marge said with a laugh.
“So what can you tell me about the Pink Lady?” asked the authoress.
“I’m afraid I don’t know all the details. Only that the diamond was found on the beach yesterday, quite by accident, by a little girl who was playing in the sand with her little brother—”
“Olivia Wynn.”
“See? I didn’t even know that. All I know is she gave it to her mom, who immediately realized this was not a piece of colored glass and took it to a jeweler in town to have it appraised.”
“And the jeweler recognized it as a precious stone and called the police,” said the woman with a nod. “Any idea how a diamond like the Pink Lady ended up on a beach in the Hamptons?”
“No idea,” said Marge truthfully. “But if I may ask: why are you so interested in this diamond? Is it connected with your book?” She held up her copy of The Sheikh’s Passion. And watched as the author immediately stiffened again.
“No, nothing to do with the book,” she said, almost snappishly, as if Marge had said the wrong thing. Then she abruptly turned on her heel and strode back to her car. But before she opened the door, she seemed to have a change of heart, and returned on her steps. “Do you… do you know where the diamond is now?”
“No idea,” Marge lied. Convincingly, she hoped.
The woman nodded, then shrugged and plastered an unconvincing smile on her face.“Oh, well,” she said. “At least it was found. That’s the main thing.” And she started to walk away again.
“Wait,” said Marge, then realized that the question she wanted to ask the woman probably would go unanswered, but decided to ask it anyway. “Do you… the book you wrote, it’s real, isn’t it? It all happened the way you describe.”
“No,” said the woman after a moment’s hesitation. “No, I just…” She seemed on the verge of saying something, but then thought better of it. “I have a very vivid imagination, and the story of the Pink Lady simply captured that imagination, that’s all. It’s fiction, Mrs. Poole, nothing more. You being a librarian should recognize a piece of fiction when you see it.”
“Oh,” said Marge, feeling slightly disappointed.
She watched as the authoress got back into her car, and quickly drove off.
12
Dinner that night was a collective affair, with the entire Poole clan gathered around the table, set up outside on the deck.
Odelia and Chase were there, of course, and Marge and Tex and Gran, but also Uncle Alec, along with his girlfriend Charlene, and even Scarlett had decided to drop by and keep us company. So it was safe to say that things proceeded in a lively way, as they usually do when the entire extended family comes together to share a nice meal.
Tex had done the honors, which was the kind of news no one likes to receive when sitting down for dinner, but the doctor had done his best, and with a little help from Chase the two men had managed to cook up a nice batch of… spaghetti bolognese, which happens to be Chase’s specialty, and also just about the only dish he’s mastered in the thirty-two years he’s been a guest on this planet.
“I think you really should try to expand your culinary skillset, Chase,” said Gran as she tried in vain to eat the spaghetti while still looking like a lady. I could have told her that spaghetti is one of those dishes it’s not very pleasant to eat in the company of others, since it not only involves a lot of acrobatics of the mouth but also slithers about to such an extent you can’t eat it without the use of a bib. And we all know that a bib makes any person, unless he’s an infant, look like a complete fool. Lucky for us, cats don’t eat spaghetti. We limit ourselves to the meatballs Chase likes to serve with his signature dish.
“What are you talking about?” said Uncle Alec, whose lips were a bright glistening red from all that bolognese sauce. “The man is a genius.”
“Actually it was Dad who took care of the main food prep today,” said Chase modestly. “I just stood by to lend him a helping hand.”
“Nonsense,” said Tex magnanimously. “You did most of the work, and I can’t thank you enough… son.”
“Thanks,” said Chase happily as he pronged a string of spaghetti and started working it into his mouth then chewing it down with visible and audible relish.
“I mean, you don’t expect your wife to eat spaghetti all her married life, do you?” Gran continued laying out her argument, undaunted by these interludes. “You should buy him a good cookbook, honey,” she told her granddaughter. “Make it a birthday gift, so he can’t claim he didn’t get it, or miraculously ‘lost’ it.”
“I already have all the recipes I need on the internet, thank you very much,” said Chase, “and I intend to start going through them one by one. Isn’t that right, babe?”
“Absolutely,” said Odelia, who was clearly not yet tired of her hubby’s spaghetti making skills.
“I found this YouTube channel called ‘Top Chef in Thirty Days’ and I’m starting with the first video tomorrow. I’ll be preparing a different dish every day. I’m calling it my thirty-day challenge.”
“Well, I just hope you’ve got an ambulance on standby,” said Gran.
“Oh, but Chase is going to get a helping hand from me, isn’t he?” said Tex cheerfully as he raised his glass of wine in honor of his son-in-law—the future ‘Top Chef.’
“Oh, God,” Gran grunted. “You mean we all have to eat—”